Live from ASCO

So lots of exciting news coming out of the ASCO meetings - especially around Melanoma. While it sucks to have it, it's a much better time to have now vs. 5 years ago! Hoping everyday with these new clinical trials and research we get closer to a cure! or at least making Melanoma a manageable disease vs. a death sentence.

This morning when I picked up the ASCO daily news front page headline is:
Investigational Immunotherapies Offer Bring Prospects in Advanced Melanoma! Of
course with the FDA approval of Ipilimumab a few years ago (aka Yervoy), it
seems that more and more focus is going towards developing these types of drugs
vs. the standard type Chemos! You wouldn't believe how many different exhibitors
are here with that as their focus!

I think you are all seeing the
numbers, but in case you haven't here they are:

The interim overall response rate for lambrolizumab
was 38%, according to investigators, who reported interim data on 135 patients
with advanced melanoma. The highest response rate was an impressive 52% in the arm receiving 10 mg/kg
every two weeks, the highest dose in the study. Ten percent of the patients in
that arm achieved a complete response, with response duration ranging from 28
days to 8 months. Four out of five patients who responded stayed on treatment.
And after a median follow-up time of 11 months, the median rate of response has
not yet been reached in the study.

Given the rise in social media - I thought this article was interesting. There are several doctors out there that are sharing knowledge out there via social media outlets (most I see are on twitter). But we also see a large number of patients (like me) also utilizing social media to share information. It's a changing world of knowledge!

There is always a debate on the sentinel lymph node biopsy and then the complete removal. The SLN is important in helping stage cancer. Without that biopsy, I doubt a petscan would have picked up the trace amount of Melanoma that was in my sentinel lymph node. All others were clear.

Dr Wolchok is a doctor at Sloan. I have several friends that see him (I've requested to see him) He is part of the 4 doctor team that leads my current trial. He just doesn't see patients on the day I am typically in for treatment. You can also see a video on his thoughts on PD1 HERE